Generate rounds in Up and Down the River
You generate one week at a time. The first round sets the starting courts; each round after applies win/lose movement.
Round 1 — the starting order
With no results yet, you choose how to seed the courts. The order you pick fills Court 1 downward, four to a court.
Common choices are random for a social league, or by rating so the top court starts with your strongest players. Whatever you choose, it only sets the starting position — after week 1 it is all results.
Generating later rounds
Make sure the current week is scored.
Open the next week.
Generate.
Winners move up a court, losers move down, and the individual variant re-pairs everyone on their new court.
Score the round before generating the next one. Movement comes entirely from results — with nothing scored there is nothing to act on.
Who is included
Only players opted in for that date. Opted-out players appear in Excluded in the group editor, and players who never respond are treated as opted out once the deadline passes.
When the numbers do not divide by 4
Every court needs exactly four players, so any remainder forms a bye group and those players sit that round.
The bye rotates: bottom-court losers swap into it rather than being pushed to a court that does not exist. Bye mode decides who sits — the bottom players, or everyone in turn. See Bye Mode for Ladder Leagues.
In the set-partners variant the same applies at pair level: courts take two pairs, so an odd pair out sits.
More than one round on a date
A play night can run several rounds. Add a sub-round for the date and rounds are labelled Week 1-1, Week 1-2, and so on — the first number is the date, the second is the round within it.
Adding a sub-round does not generate its matches; open that round and generate. See Managing rounds and dates in Ladder formats.
Generating automatically
Auto-generation can build the next round as play completes instead of you doing it each time. See Auto-generation in Ladder formats.
You cannot clear a round while auto-generation is running. Stop it first.
Adjusting before play
To move someone to a different court before a round is played, use the group editor. See Editing groups in Ladder formats.